“I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday,” said Anne.
“Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!”
“That wasn’t my fault,” laughed Anne. “If my parents had consulted me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course. It must be delightful5 to come into the world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister. But since I didn’t, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane will be home. We’ll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but we’ll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been SEEN although they may have been LOOKED at. We’ll make friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our hearts.”
“It SOUNDS awfully6 nice,” said Diana, with some inward distrust of Anne’s magic of words. “But won’t it be very damp in some places yet?”
“Oh, we’ll wear rubbers,” was Anne’s concession7 to practicalities. “And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare lunch. I’m going to have the daintiest things possible . . . things that will match the spring, you understand . . . little jelly tarts8 and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches too, though they’re NOT very poetical9.”
Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic . . . a day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green.
Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring witch-work even in his sober, aged11" target="_blank">middle-aged10 blood, saw four girls, basket laden12, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fir. Their blithe13 voices and laughter echoed down to him.
“It’s so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn’t it?” Anne was saying, with true Anneish philosophy. “Let’s try to make this a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look back with delight. We’re to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else. ‘Begone, dull care!’ Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong in school yesterday.”
“Oh, I know the expression . . . I’ve felt it often enough on my own face. But put it out of your mind, there’s a dear. It will keep till Monday . . . or if it doesn’t so much the better. Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets! There’s something for memory’s picture gallery. When I’m eighty years old . . . if I ever am . . . I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That’s the first good gift our day has given us.”
“If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet,” said Priscilla.
Anne glowed.
“I’m so glad you SPOKE15 that thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This world would be a much more interesting place . . . although it IS very interesting anyhow . . . if people spoke out their real thoughts.”
“I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking nasty things. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we are going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts. Everybody can say just what comes into her head. THAT is conversation. Here’s a little path I never saw before. Let’s explore it.”
The path was a winding17 one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file and even then the fir boughs18 brushed their faces. Under the firs were velvety19 cushions of moss2, and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety of green growing things.
“What a lot of elephant’s ears,” exclaimed Diana. “I’m going to pick a big bunch, they’re so pretty.”
“Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all or else far too much,” said Anne, “Oh, girls, look at that!”
“That” was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open glade21 where the path ended. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was a glimmering22 placid23 sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal. A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin.
“HOW sweet!” said Jane.
“Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs,” cried Anne, dropping her basket and extending her hands.
“You can’t be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers,” was her decision.
“Well, we must name this place before we leave it,” said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic25 of facts. “Everybody suggest a name and we’ll draw lots. Diana?”
“Crystal Lake,” said Jane.
Anne, standing27 behind them, implored28 Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate another such name and Priscilla rose to the occasion with “Glimmer-glass.” Anne’s selection was “The Fairies’ Mirror.”
The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil Schoolma’am Jane produced from her pocket, and placed in Anne’s hat. Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one. “Crystal Lake,” read Jane triumphantly29. Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought that chance had played the pool a shabby trick she did not say so.
Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion30 of Mr. Silas Sloane’s back pasture. Across it they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloane’s pasture, came an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy31 blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged32 into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight33, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.
“This is where the bad wood elves dwell,” whispered Anne. “They are impish and malicious34 but they can’t harm us, because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir; and didn’t you see a group of them on that big freckly35 toadstool we just passed? The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny places.”
“I wish there really were fairies,” said Jane. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have three wishes granted you . . . or even only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted? I’d wish to be rich and beautiful and clever.”
“I’d wish to be tall and slender,” said Diana.
“I would wish to be famous,” said Priscilla. Anne thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy.
“I’d wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody’s heart and all our lives,” she said.
“But that,” said Priscilla, “would be just wishing this world were like heaven.”
“Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be summer and autumn . . . yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes. Don’t you, Jane?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously36 to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that.
“Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every day in heaven,” laughed Diana.
“And didn’t you tell her we would?” asked Anne.
“Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn’t be thinking of dresses at all there.”
“Oh, I think we will . . . a LITTLE,” said Anne earnestly. “There’ll be plenty of time in all eternity37 for it without neglecting more important things. I believe we’ll all wear beautiful dresses . . . or I suppose RAIMENT would be a more suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first . . . it would take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in THIS world.”
Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent38 golden wine, and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic39 of tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley of lissome40 firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.
Beyond were the “back fields” of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed41 in by beeches42 and firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . . . or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke43, overgrown with mosses44 and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish45, wind-swayed bloom above the lush green grasses.
“How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?” said Priscilla in amazement48.
“It must be Hester Gray’s garden,” said Diana. “I’ve heard mother speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn’t have supposed that it could be in existence still. You’ve heard the story, Anne?”
“No, but the name seems familiar to me.”
“Oh, you’ve seen it in the graveyard49. She is buried down there in the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and ‘Sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged twenty-two.’ Jordan Gray is buried right beside her but there’s no stone to him. It’s a wonder Marilla never told you about it, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten.”
“Well, if there’s a story we must have it,” said Anne. “Let’s sit right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls, there are hundreds of them . . . they’ve spread over everything. It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making. To think that I’ve lived within a mile of this place for six years and have never seen it before! Now, Diana.”
“Long ago,” began Diana, “this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray. He didn’t live on it . . . he lived where Silas Sloane lives now. He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray. She was working in a store and she hated it. She’d been brought up in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked her to marry him she said she would if he’d take her away to some quiet spot where she’d see nothing but fields and trees. So he brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee, and it’s certain that Hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper50; but mother says she was very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper but she had a knack51 with flowers. And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn’t have anybody to wait on her. He did it all himself and mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he’d wrap her in a shawl and carry her out to the garden and she’d lie there on a bench quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled up at him . . . and closed her eyes . . . and that,” concluded Diana softly, “was the end.”
“Oh, what a dear story,” sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.
“What became of Jordan?” asked Priscilla.
“He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester.”
“I can’t understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything,” said Jane.
“Oh, I can easily understand THAT,” said Anne thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest. And she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four beautiful years before she died. . . four years of perfect happiness, so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best on earth smiling down at you . . . oh, I think it was beautiful!”
“She set out those cherry trees over there,” said Diana. “She told mother she’d never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping52 to make the world beautiful after she was dead.”
“I’m so glad we came this way,” said Anne, the shining-eyed. “This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?”
“No . . . only just that she was pretty.”
“I’m rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like, without being hampered53 by facts. I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little wistful, pale face.”
The girls left their baskets in Hester’s garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling54 in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all . . . on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne’s dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty55, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked, and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring; but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade.
“Look do you see that poem?” she said suddenly, pointing.
“Where?” Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes on the birch trees.
“There . . . down in the brook . . . that old green, mossy log with the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples56 that look as if they’d been combed, and that single shaft57 of sunshine falling right athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it’s the most beautiful poem I ever saw.”
“I should rather call it a picture,” said Jane. “A poem is lines and verses.”
“Oh dear me, no.” Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively58. “The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles59 and flounces are YOU, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them . . . and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul . . . even of a poem.”
“I wonder what a soul . . . a person’s soul . . . would look like,” said Priscilla dreamily.
“Like that, I should think,” answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted60 sunlight streaming through a birch tree. “Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy61 stains and quivers . . . and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea . . . and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.”
“I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers,” said Priscilla.
“Then your soul is a golden narcissus,” said Anne, “and Diana’s is like a red, red rose. Jane’s is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome62 and sweet.”
Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were talking about. Could she?
The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester’s garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery64 next day and laid upon Hester’s grave. Minstrel robins65 were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes66. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.
“Well, we have had a lovely time after all,” said Diana, as if she had hardly expected to have it when she set out.
“It has been a truly golden day,” said Priscilla.
“I’m really awfully fond of the woods myself,” said Jane.
Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray.
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1
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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tarts
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| n.果馅饼( tart的名词复数 )；轻佻的女人；妓女；小妞 | |
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9
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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blithe
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| adj.快乐的，无忧无虑的 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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15
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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sagely
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| adv. 贤能地，贤明地 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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19
velvety
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| adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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glade
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| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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23
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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boggy
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| adj.沼泽多的 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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freckly
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| adj.多雀斑的 | |
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conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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lissome
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| adj.柔软的；敏捷的 | |
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41
hemmed
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| 缝…的褶边( hem的过去式和过去分词 )； 包围 | |
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42
beeches
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| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
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43
dyke
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| n.堤，水坝，排水沟 | |
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44
mosses
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| n. 藓类, 苔藓植物 名词moss的复数形式 | |
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45
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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46
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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47
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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48
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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49
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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50
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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51
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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52
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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53
hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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55
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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56
ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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57
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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58
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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59
ruffles
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| 褶裥花边( ruffle的名词复数 ) | |
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sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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63
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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64
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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robins
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| n.知更鸟，鸫( robin的名词复数 )；（签名者不分先后，以避免受责的）圆形签名抗议书（或请愿书） | |
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marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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